One word? When seven would do…

I love out and about days the most :). I love seeingf rriends, learning from passionate experts, being with people, drinking tea and coming home to deconstruct it all with the 3 most important people in my world afterwards. Today had all of the above and more :).

I allowed more time for the car start and de-mist / defrost than it needed so headed to a tyre place my Dad had recommended and happened to be on the way to Tasha’s and got a new spare tyre for my car. They only took cash so while the guy was fitting a new tyre onto the wheel we dashed off to a cashpoint and then collected it. We were only five minutes late at Tasha’s which is probably earlier than we’d normally be :).

We had a quick play for the kids upstairs and cooing over the rearrangement of furniture downstairs for me as Tasha has been doing ‘home-makin’ ‘ ;). Then all in the car and off to Barnham to meet Julie. She was having Honey’s teeth looked at by the Horse Dentist and thought we might be interested in coming to watch. I was very interested, as was Tasha and Scarlett came over to watch some of it and ask a few questions of Suzanne the equine dentist. We learnt about how many teeth horses have, what they are for, that they have milk teeth, that they can have ‘wolf teeth’ (like wisdom teeth), that they have a set which don’t stop growing and need filing down if they don’t wear them down and watch Suzanne with her rachet contraption in Honey’s mouth to hold open her jaw so Suzanne could both stick her hand down Honey’s throat to pull out some unswallowed due to not chewing properly grass and to examine Honey’s teeth. She filed a couple down that are no longer being ground down by natural methods all while answering all sorts of questions by Scarlett – quite intelligent and me – less so and more along the lines of ‘do did you always want to be a horse dentist when you grew up?’. Not a job I’d like to do at all but inspirational to meet someone who so clearly has found what makes her happy, earns her a living and she finds rewarding and worthwhile :).

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The kids all did plenty of bouncing on the trampoline and Scarlett did some chatting to Suzanne and some catching the chickens free ranging about 🙂

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The kids all decided to walk back to Julies with Julie’s Mum (who they all call ‘Oma’ – sounds like ‘ooomi’ – German for Granny, accurate in Jack, Maisie and Lorna’s case, honorary in Davies and Scarletts – funny that the actual grandmother they do share with J, M and L isn’t the one they all have a relationship and shared name with :)) across the fields while Julie, Tasha and I drove back to Julie’s to get the kettle on. Julie wanted me to look at her laptop which was doing funny things with email accounts so I fixed that and then Gerda (I don’t call her Oma) and the kids arrived back with a hedgehog. Scarlett (who else!?) had found it snuffling around and known it should be hibernating but was clearly too small so they’d brought it back in a welly boot. There was some concern it was hurt but when it was tipped onto the grass and left for a while it uncurled and seemed fine. We let it scuttle about for a while but Scarlett was really worried it would find somewhere to hide but not be able to last the winter so we caught it and put it in the guinea pig run while we debated what to do with it. Scarlett found worms to bring it to eat. It was decided it would be bedded in a crate in straw in the polytunnel and fed cat food so Scarlett prepared the crate for it and her and I moved it down there.

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All of this meant we were a few minutes late getting to Willow (where Caz and Bid live, not our campervan) to do the flint knapping course Davies, Scarlett and Toby were doing this afternoon. It was first in two Home Ed workshops about Stone Age tools led by Karl Lee of Primative Technology and was excellent :). I’m a bit of a flint knapping fan having had a go at River Cottage so was thrilled to be given a hammerstone and piece of flint again to have a bash (ha ha) at. Karl did a brief introductory chat about flint knapping, early tools, hunting and other uses, what sort of stone flint is and how it is made and some historical facts and dates. All done in a very interactive and interesting way that had the children – aged 8-10ish and accompanying adults all captivated. He then made a hand axe, we had a tea /run around break and then he showed us how to make a hide scraper, handed out hammerstones and flints and came round helping us as everyone had a go.

I loved it, the kids loved it, it was excellent 🙂

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We had head straight off when the session was over as we needed to get back for Badgers. I had anticipated us being late and had let Julie know it was a possibility but in the end we were on time. I was freezing – too much time stood in a field then sitting in a greenhouse with a through draught today – so a welcome cup of tea warmed me up a bit. We were running through what the Badgers will be doing for presentation night so there was lots of standing up at the front recounting things we have done for Hungry Badger. I’d tried to let them use their own words as far as possible and offer ideas but let it very much be about them and how they’d seen the badge so was unbelieveably touched to hear one of the girls had written at the end of her bit ‘I have really enjoyed doing the Hungry Badger badge and will really miss Nic when she goes’ 🙂 awwwww. Maybe it has been worth it after all ;).

We only have presentation night left to attend which I imagine will be something of a tear jerker actually with Davies getting his SuperBadger award and all three of us leaving. Might even invite my parents down to watch 😆

Back home Ady had got dinner on for Davies and Scarlett and the fire lit. He and I got straight into stripping the second wall of wallpaper in the lounge. The kids helped too after their tea – I’ve told them they can do the third wall tomorrow while I’m at work and Dad is here with them if they like :).

The kids went to bed, we had baths I was the Apprentice, paused for half an hour and then slightly ruined by reading a tweet from Richard Herring disclosing the winning team leader – d’oh! Am now wondering just when I’ll manage to do baking to bring to camp…